Did anything interesting happen at GDC this year? No, not really. Michelle Obama announced a new scheme to coerce developers into making games that will "encourage healthier eating and exercise habits among kids, and educate parents on their childrens’ diets," with hilariously small cash prizes ($40000? Do these fools have any idea how much it costs to make a game these days?). It’s pretty much a bust, except for this chilling quote from Aneesh Chopra, who apparently gets paid to talk about video games at cabinet meetings:
"We’re hoping this might strengthen the [game industry’s] ties with Washington … this might be the beginning of a longer collaboration."
Fuck you, Aneesh Chopra. And while I’m thinking about it, fuck you too, Deepak Chopra. It’s funny watching the government’s rudimentary thought-like processes slowly evolve, though; fifteen years ago, first lady Luciferia Clinton was trying to burn video games at the stake, since they were apparently turning all of our children into battle-hardened super-soldiers. Nowadays we’re going to try to use these powers for niceness instead of evil, and subvert some of the indoctrination box’s evil sorcery to convince our children to eat lots of celery while gunning down their classmates.
In other news, Sid Meier gave a completely wack speech about how surprised he was to discover that many people who play his games aren’t perfect reasoning machines. I guess the problem is the ESRB — they failed to give Civilization 4 the coveted "Mr. Spock Only" rating, and normal stupid people were allowed to play it too. The concept of Sid Meier having no idea that most people just react to things viscerally and don’t think so much really makes me wonder about his own thinkosity.
Also Gabe Newell got his Pioneer Award, and used his speech to talk a bit about the Portal ARG. He was going to show a little multimedia presentation about it, but then it bluescreened on him. Which, as anybody who’s been paying any attention to the ARG immediately knew, was another piece of the puzzle. Here’s the error screen, which has encoded in it the message that the ARG proper will resume at E3.
On the subject of Portal, though it has nothing to do with GDC, GameInformer has an interview up with Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw, which should put the final nail in the weird theory that they’re the same person. It has pictures and everything. I guess there’s a third dude involved too, but he’s Canadian and didn’t write for OMM, so fuck him.
March 13th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
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The hilariously poorly-named Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising is out. Seriously, this game’s name takes up like two thirds of my Steam games window real estate. And I had to upgrade my video card before I could install it, since my old card didn’t support enough colons.
If you played the original Dawn of War 2, you pretty much know how to play this one. There aren’t any major gameplay changes. Which is okay with me, mind, since Dawn of War 2 was a pretty good time; basically what you have here is a mission pack with meltaguns, and, since the lack of meltaguns was what really held the first game back, well, you’re good to go. For some reason, Relic still hasn’t decoupled the game from the truly awful Games For Windows Live service, but at least they (or Microsoft, or Satan, or somebody) have arranged for it to work properly this time.
The biggest problem with Chaos Rising is that it’s short. I mean, real short. It also doesn’t contain much in the way of side missions — there are twelve main campaign missions, three optional missions, and that’s it. They’re fun, but that’s not a whole lot of content for thirty bucks, even if it did ship with a free copy of Volition’s lousy GTA ripoff, Saints Row 2.
The game’s storyline junk is pretty decent. Entertainingly plotted, at least. The main arc is that there’s a traitor somewhere in your squad, and you need to ferret out who it is. So there’s a bunch of tension and moody music, and you go on missions to gather data and attempt to figure it out. There are just two problems with this. First, there’s a giant ridiculous plot hole involving the traitor doing things that make absolutely no sense at all. Secondly, it’s stupidly, blisteringly obvious the whole time who the traitor is, which kind of sucks a lot of the suspense out of it. But except for those two things, hey!
The game’s a lot harder than the original campaign was, but in a lot of ways I’m not sure it’s harder in a fun way. A lot of the difficulty increase comes from bosses having AOE instant death attacks without any warning, which pretty much just turns the fight into a graveyard zerg. The final boss in particular is annoying like that — he has so much health, and kills so many dudes so quickly that you’ll spend like three fifths of the fight falling back. On the other hand, there’s some new challenge involved via the corruption mechanic, which is pretty fun; certain choices you make can cause your squads to become corrupted by chaos, and they have a sliding track of new traits they pick up as you get more and more corrupt. It’s pretty fun. Usually there will be an easy way to accomplish a mission, but you’ll gain corruption for it; getting through with no corruption is a lot harder, and there will be a still-harder way that awards redemption points. Pretty good design, I’d say.
March 13th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
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So apparently Jake Peavy held a benefit concert recently, and a whole bunch of baseball mans performed songs there. I’m not even making that up. Deluxe heartthrob Sexy Barry Zito was there providing some drums and backup vocals, but not granting us any new original material. Why not, Barry? Are you afraid I’ll stop calling you if you do? Because I won’t.
March 13th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball, Bullshit |
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Did you know that the famous Dr. Derek Smart, Ph.D has his own blog? Neither did I. And yet, here he is, being his old, weirdly-vehement self, and ranting and raving about pointless things. Leave it to Dr. Smart to be the only person in all creation still having that tired, ten-year-old argument. I’m pretty sure it’s the lazy man’s alternative to being a vegetarian; you get to feel superior to everybody else because you’re adhering to some bizarre moon dogma, but you still get to eat bacon.
March 13th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Games |
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